Kenneth Grant - The Magical Revival

The Magical Revival by Kenneth Grant Contents + +++ +

10 Dion Fortune 173

11 Austin Osman Spare and the Zos Kia Cultus 180

ERRATA

This volume is a direct reprint from the 1972 first edition, in which there were a number of errors. These have all been markedwith an asterisk wherever they arise in the text, and have been listed on page 234.

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Aleister Crowley at the age of fifty-six Liber Oz (The Book of Strength)

facing page 20 21

The magical seals of Crowley's occult organization 52 Magical designs on the ceiling and floor of the Vault of the Adepts 53 Lam, an extraterrestial Intelligence with whom Crowley was in astral contact 84 Aleister Crowley in 1910 85

The Death Posture: preliminary sensation symbolized 180 The Magical Thought-stream by Austin Spare 180 Preliminaries to the Witches' Sabbath as painted by Austin Spare 181

Line Illustrations f

The Qabalistic Tree of Life, showing the ten Sephiroth and twenty-two Paths 212 The Qabalistic Tree of Life, showing the system of grades according to Crowley'sff 213

reorganization of the A.'.A.'.

For

STEFFI and GREGORY Acknowledgements + +++ +

The author has at his disposal the entire body of Aleister Crowley's writings (published and unpublished), and wishes to thank Mr. John Symonds-Crowley's literary executor-for allowing complete freedom in the use of it.

He also wishes to thank Frater Ani Abthilal, IX O.T.O., who made available an initiated Tantric work on the worship of the Supreme Goddess, by an Adept of the Left Hand Path, which has thrown much light on the Draconian Mysteries that Crowley and others helped to revive.

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"For us, who have the inner knowledge, inherited or won, it remains to restore the true rites of Attis, Adonis, Osins, of Set, Serapis, Mithras, and Abel".

These words of Aleister Crowley inspired me as a youth, and, imagining myself as one of those to whom they were addressed, I soon discovered that for some reason I have not been able to fathom it was the god Set that I was being called upon to honour. I accordingly took it upon myself to penetrate the Mysteries of this, the most ancient of deities, and to trace the history of his rites from an indefinite antiquity to the present day.

When I wrote The Magical Revival, twenty years ago, I had no notion that the book would form the first of a series of trilogies that I would still be engaged upon in the nineties. Nor did I expect it to interest any but the serious occultist. But the numerous letters which I received after its publication, and the often profound comments expressed in them, caused me to plan the series subsequently known as the Typhonian Trilogies.

Toward the close of the eighties I was approached by Skoob Esoterica, who sought to re-issue under the title of Hidden Lore the Carfax Monographs which I had produced in the early sixties in collaboration with Steffi Grant.

This project led not only to the task of publishing the next of the remaining volumes of the trilogies, under the careful editing of Christopher Johnson and Caroline Wise, but also to the reprinting of the earlier titles. So, here again is The Magical Revival.

Kenneth Grant, London, 1990.

"The Knower of Truth should go about the world outwardly stupid like a child, a madman or a devil."

Mahavakyaratnamala

THE purpose of this book is to place in perspective the various occult tendencies that led up to the revival of interest in Occultism in recent years, and to interpret this resurgence in terms of humanity's need for a universal approach to Reality that transcends all previous systems of mystical and magical Attainment. Emphasis is placed upon the work of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), because he embodies in a highly concentrated form the particular Magical Tradition that underlies the present revival, and for a similar reason space is given to Austin Osman Spare (1889*-1956), Dion Fortune (1891*-1946), Charles Stansfeld Jones (1889*-1950) and others, who in their own peculiar way revitalized the

Current.

Having for many years practised magick as a result of personal contact with Crowley, I have been able to relate his work to the ancient systems which he has been instrumental in reviving. My interpretation of his work is not a matter of speculation for it can be substantiated entirely by reference to the vast mass of material (diaries, letters, essays, books, etc.) which survived his death in 1947, from which I have freely quoted.

As regards Austin Spare, being his literary executor I have access to supposed, the metaphysical was the exoteric version, not vice versa. This is proved conclusively by the seventeenth chapter of The Book of the Dead, which is certainly the oldest body of written teachings known to man. Here, side by side with the text which was intended for general use, appears the interpolated gloss of the initiated priest, explaining the text after the mauner of the Gnosis, or Magical Tradition. The secret, oral, or hidden wisdom embodied in the gloss, refers to the physical origins of the abstract concepts which appear in the text; spiritual matters are explained in terms of physical, more precisely of physiological, phenomena. These explanations were usually reserved for initiates, and the reason for their concealment was due to the physical nature of the Gnosis, which became, in truth, the forbidden wisdom of later ages. The ancients may not have been acquainted with psychology, sexology and endocrinology as known today, but they most certainly were acquainted with the occult uses of the sexual current, the improper handling of which leads to disaster; and they were infinitely more knowledgeable concerning the sexual sciences than are Western psychologists today.

In mediaeval times secrecy was resorted to more as a safeguard for the occultist than for the world of which he formed a part. The scene is not much different today, except that the tables are turned. The indiscriminate revelation of occult formulae often leads to insanity and death. The unprepared who meddle with occult processes invite trouble. In the realm of profane science the horror of the situation is today only too apparent. The magician, who was the scientist of bygone days, was wiser than his modern counterpart. He hedged his science about in order to protect not only himself but the world about him.

The reader will therefore appreciate the reason for the peculiar method employed in the construction of this book. I have resorted to the time-tested method of symbolic metathesis, when the subject-matter requires that veil of secrecy demanded no less today of the occultist than of the Hierophant of ancient times. With this difference: I have introduced no blinds, no deliberately misleading statements or vague allusions to formulae that cannot be shown to be as precise in their action and reaction as their analogues in the more orthodox sciences.